BELOVED HERO CHEATS DEATH
in second grade, a substitute teacher
from Wisconsin taught my class,
she said
most of the towns in Wisconsin
are spread out, unlike here
this shocked me
because I thought all cities
were clustered together, like
there’s Seattle, and there’s suburbs,
and that’s all the world is
in second grade, I was in Seattle
with my dad and I asked him
why do they put all the cool stuff
in Seattle if no one lives here?
and he told me a lot of people live there
I thought people just lived
in suburbs and commuted to Seattle
you know those bumps circling
nipples, on the areola?
I learned they’re called Montgomery Glands
they are a beautiful and erotic part of boobs
but I found them more erotic
when I thought they were nameless
I imagine that prescription bottles
are orange for the same reason
that the national color
of the Netherlands is orange
but their flag is red white and blue
when I was young,
and would close my eyes to sleep
I’d imagine I was floating in a void
it would feel scary, but calming
and the air would feel like the edge
of a hardback book when the binding frayed
in my dream, I’d stand on a train platform
in the middle of the void, until
I felt too scared and woke up
I hadn’t slept feeling like that
since I was a little boy at a resort
in Mexico, but I slept like that
on the night you left
on the night you left,
after I worked at the calendar store,
we drove to the Taco Bell on Burnside
then drove back to your empty apartment,
which echoed like a church, or cave
from your window
I saw a red sign
that said ‘Montgomery Park’
and a blue sign
that said ‘Volvo’
looking at the city felt like a movie,
where Americans go to Tokyo
and impose their feelings
on the contrast of city lights
and the sky’s lack of light,
and the way light and no light
blur together
christmas lights
I want to watch Dragon Ball Z with you
you’re in Washington with me
but you’re in Seattle and I’m in Auburn
you’re in a motel and I’m on Kirk’s back patio
and I don’t know even if you like Dragon Ball Z
spaces feel different when the spaces
are related to other space in a new way
like when I stopped by 7-Eleven
on the way home from working
at the carnival, I saw it as an island
in darkness and I didn’t know
Dairy Queen was across the street
but then I learned that behind that Dairy Queen
is what would become your house
and that 7-Eleven became part of the fabric
of something much bigger
I imagine you went to a Chinese garden,
I see you behind a tea house and pond
you are standing perfect and perfectly still,
I want to see you under
the Christmas lights above my bed,
that make your stomach skin look blue--
every color of light is within those Christmas lights,
so why does your skin only reflect blue?
hot tub
I remember at one of Jack’s big house parties,
not long before college,
I crawled into the hot tub in my underwear
four people joined me, including
Dwight and Danielle—they were dating at the time
we talked about the future and high school
we climbed on to the trampoline
and we laid flat on our backs
in the young, breezy, summer,
night air like a heated swimming pool
Kirk played his guitar laying down
we looked at space,
and talked to each other without
ever looking away from that canopy
that looked like negative exposures
of a stucco ceiling, and the whole time
you kept chain smoking on the back porch
Charlemagne
I’m sitting in the Portland airport baggage claim
while you take your shoes off
I took a photo of all 8 pages
of the letter I wrote to you
and I’m waiting until I think you are sitting
in airplane Terminal C, reading it
so I can read it on my phone
while you read the real thing
Michael snapchatted me a video
of his Shiba Inu dancing
our Lyft driver was named Goran,
he escaped the Bosnian Genocide
at age 15, he tells me the beaches
in Croatia are beautiful, I’ll probably never know
we went to that new pizza place
down the street from your old house,
across the street from 7-Eleven,
I called it your last supper
and you cried a little and I did too
the pizza place is space themed,
seems to be meant for kids
I got a pizza with kalamata olives
and artichoke hearts, you got
a pizza with bacon
I tell you that the proletariat uprising
will come on the populist, salt-of-the-earth
ethos of pizza cut in squares
you ask me if I still will go to China
while we drink coffee in the airport
and I say yes but I don’t know when
I remember a couple weeks ago
I asked if you’d ever been to Montreal
you told me no, but it’s a common destination
in New Hampshire, you tell me to visit
and we can go to Montreal this summer
and it sounds beautiful but I can’t
you lay on your side in my bed like a body
of water, with your arms crossing your chest,
and someday I will be walking in
a back alley in Shanghai and see
a blonde woman outside 7-Eleven
and remember you
Kaliningrad
I wonder why you hear ‘French’
and think about impressionism
I wonder why you hear ‘German’
and think about expressionism
I think about how I studied German
and forgot most of it
I wonder if how we look is a symbol
of who we are as people
we both wear glasses, which seems
to signify something more
than bad eyesight
and you always look like you’re smiling
in a way that if someone else
made that face, they’d look smug
and your hair is longer than mine
and probably will always be
no matter how much you cut it
Algona
the wedding is at the house
I’d drive to after track practice,
the house she grew up in,
where we’d play Beetle Adventure Racing
the first time I went
to Sarah’s house, I’d never taken that left
in front of the SuperMall before,
I didn’t know there was a town there,
that I imagine exists as a self-sustained world
built just for you, with a Dairy Queen
and library
those summer nights we’d go to the park
across the street from Robyn’s house
and push each other on the tire swing
and after things changed,
I was still friends with your sister
I would swoop her in my truck
and I would see you standing
and watching